


No Good Deeds

by MrProphet



Category: The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 12:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10696599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	No Good Deeds

**The Island. The beach hard by CALIBAN’s hut.**  
_Enter the boy CALIBAN dragging a small boat. PROSPERO and the INFANT Miranda within._  
CALIBAN  
What treasure is this that the sea provides  
What new thing sent into my simple world.  
  
_The boy CALIBAN walks to his hut._  
  
Always has that mysterious expanse  
Been as father and mother of my youth  
Bringing gifts to my hands from distant lands  
Playthings and curios for an orphan boy.  
A box of rare woods, inlaid with silver.  
A cup of gold and a dagger of flint  
Aztec-wrought and dark with innocent blood.  
And this scimitar of damascene steel  
Lost from the deck of a Spanish man-o-war.  
Yet are these things unlike any I have seen  
Save only that their shape is like my own.  
I had thought that with my mother’s demise  
Had the only other of my nature  
Passed forever beyond this mortal coil.  
Now I see that I am but one among  
A multitude of those who as I do  
Have arms and legs and eyes and hair and who  
Must have each a beating heart within their breast  
Which knows such joy, rage and sorrow as I.  
And I have brought these two out of the sea  
Which might otherwise have claimed them its own.  
Was this the right thing for me to have done?  
To take from that which once gave all so free?  
Or should I have these strange folk abandoned  
And in my isolated state remained?  
Of what strange fate shall my act of kindness  
Prove the genesis? Of greater fortune  
Or of some doom more fatal and unkind?  
Only time shall reveal if this good deed  
Shall be with reward or punishment replied.  



End file.
